Desktop Icons disappeared on Ubuntu 18.04

Question

I have already searched among many posts but I have not been able to solve, my problem is that since I updated to Ubuntu 18.04 I no longer see the icons on the desktop.

Through GNOME Tweaks if I try to enable the "Show icons" option a strange thing happens: the icons do not appear, but instead the Home folder opens By the way, the Home folder opens automatically whenever I start the PC, I think there could be a correlation but I don't know how.

Following another thread I downloaded the "Desktop icons" extension (that was missing) and with that I can finally see the icons, I can open the files but I can't move them or delete them, so I guess it's not the correct solution. In addition, even with Desktop icons, the Desktop settings in Tweak Tools have no effect.

Can anyone help me?

Solution 1

On Ubuntu 18.04 desktop icons are provided by nautilus-desktop which is a part of the nautilus package, not by the "Desktop Icons" extension as you have suspected. So it seems nautilus-desktop is not working correctly. To fix the issue purge and reinstall the nautilus package and restart your computer.

Solution 2

I had the same problem, all files on the desktop were gone.

I then ran nautilus-desktop from the terminal and the files were shown again.

So what happened? I had run

usermod -G new-group my-username 

and forgot to include -a in the command, thus removing myself from all other groups. I had logged out and in again, then observed this.

Solution 3

On a Ubuntu 18.04 system, I followed these steps:

1. I opened the "Desktop" folder in nautilus.
2. I then dragged all the ".desktop" files to my desktop.
3. When a dialog popped up and asked whether to trust those files, I answered in the affirmative.

Comments

[Aquarius Power]

in short nautilus-desktop :>

[Kim Lundberg Stegenborg Madsen]

@AquariusPower: more like "Permissions" :-)

[Lexible]

Does not work on Ubuntu 19.10.

[Lexible]

There is no nautilus-desktop command on 19.10, even when purging and reinstalling nautilus.

[pomsky]

It's not supposed to. The question is specifically about 18.04 and the answer mentions the difference in the methods of desktop icon handling between 18.04 (nautilus-desktop) and later releases (Desktop Icons extension).

[Lexible]

I made the comment for other 19.10 users, that's all. :)